Lively Catholic debate over health-care bill abortion provisions
Differences over complex questions is nothing new to religious groups, as we see in the Sunday gospel's debate between Jesus and Jewish religious leaders about the woman caught in adultery. Leaders of Catholic women's orders representing 59,000 nuns ...
Differences over complex questions is nothing new to religious groups, as we see in the Sunday gospel's debate between Jesus and Jewish religious leaders about the woman caught in adultery. Leaders of Catholic women's orders representing 59,000 nuns sent lawmakers a letter Wednesday urging them to pass the Senate health-care bill. The measure contains abortion funding restrictions that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) said don't go far enough.
"Despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions," said the letter signed by 60 leaders of women's religious orders. "It will uphold longstanding conscience protections and it will make historic new investments . . . in support of pregnant women. This is the real pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it."
The USCCB and the National Right to Life Committee have denounced the bill as containing a backdoor subsidy for abortion. But the nuns and the Catholic Health Association--representing some 600 hospitals--said restrictions in the Senate bill would still prevent taxpayer funding for abortion, although the legal mechanism for doing so is different from what the bishops prefer.
"This is politics; this isn't a question of faith and morals," said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a national Catholic social activism lobby. "We are the ones who work every day with people who are suffering because they don't have health care. We cannot turn our backs on them, so for us, health care reform is a faith-based response to human need."
"Despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions," said the letter signed by 60 leaders of women's religious orders. "It will uphold longstanding conscience protections and it will make historic new investments . . . in support of pregnant women. This is the real pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it."
The USCCB and the National Right to Life Committee have denounced the bill as containing a backdoor subsidy for abortion. But the nuns and the Catholic Health Association--representing some 600 hospitals--said restrictions in the Senate bill would still prevent taxpayer funding for abortion, although the legal mechanism for doing so is different from what the bishops prefer.
"This is politics; this isn't a question of faith and morals," said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a national Catholic social activism lobby. "We are the ones who work every day with people who are suffering because they don't have health care. We cannot turn our backs on them, so for us, health care reform is a faith-based response to human need."
Source: An article by Erica Werner for the Associated Press